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FREE WALT DISNEY WORLD DINING: A GOOD DEAL FOR MILITARY FAMILIES?

(Updated to reflect Shades of Green’s new 40% discount.)

Inspired by this post on MilitaryDisneyTips.com, what follows tries to guide military families intending to travel to Walt Disney World to the best deal possible during the period that free dining is available.

It’s a tricky question because there’s a bunch of other deals also available during this period, some of which can be combined

• Disney’s offer of heavily discounted Military Salute 4 day tickets
• Its Military Salute offer of discounts of 30-40% off of Disney World resort hotels
• Shades of Green, which is always a deal compared to Disney deluxe resorts, and usually one compared to its moderates (and where you can combine lower-cost hotel rooms with the discounted Military Salute tickets). Shades now has discounts of 40% off during the free dining period, making it an even better deal

Here’s the basics:

• The discounted tickets are $138/person for 4 days.  That’s almost half price.  But they can’t have days added to them, so for longer trips, there quickly becomes no savings. The discounted tickets plus a regularly priced day is still a small bargain, but a normal Disney 6 day ticket is cheaper than a military salute ticket plus 2 regular days.  So longer trips yield less or no savings
• The room rate discount percentage is higher for deluxes (40%) than for moderates (35%), and higher for moderates than for values (30%).  Since deluxe prices are much higher, savings are much greater the more expensive the room.  A $400 a night deluxe room saves $160 a night at 40%, while a $125 a night value saves only $38 a night at 30%.  These savings occur for every night of your trip, so longer trips increase savings
• Dining plan savings also happen for every night of your trip, and are the same if you stay in a deluxe or a moderate.  They are less if you stay in a value, as what you get for free in a value is the “quick service” plan, not the regular dining plan. You save more per night with a larger family, and less the more of your family is under 10.
• Shades of Green gives you value for money every night, but is dull compared to alternatives.  At its 40% discount, it is a remarkable deal

Sadly, you really do have to do the math for your own family, because of savings differences in both the ticket deal and the dining plan based on how large your family is and how many are younger than ten at the time of your visit, differences in the length of your stay, and the specific prices of the resort types you are aimed at. 

But if your family looks like my example family of two adults and two kids, one younger than ten and one older, and is taking either a three night or an eight night trip, I can give you an exact answer:

• For shorter trips, staying at Shades of Green and using the salute tickets is the cheapest option.  If you don’t want to stay at Shades, answers vary.
• For longer trips, Shades is the cheapest option if you’d otherwise stay at a deluxe resort, but free dining is the better deal if values or moderates is your alternative

[Read more →]

RECOMMENDED GUIDEBOOKS FOR FIRST TIME FAMILY VISITORS TO WALT DISNEY WORLD

This site has a mixed attitude towards guidebooks. 

On the one hand yourfirstvisit.net was designed from the start to make poring through them unnecessary, and in one instance they can actually harm your first family visit to Walt Disney World: if you read in them before your visit too much about the rides themselves, and hence lose some of the mystery and drama of “what happens next.”

On the other hand, they are fun, interesting, helpful, and informative.

So among the many guidebooks out there, I recommend three:

• Bob Sehlinger and Len Testa’s The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2012 (reviewed here)
• Julie Neal’s The Complete Walt Disney World 2012 (reviewed here), and
• Jennifer, Dave and Allison Marx’s PassPorter’s Walt Disney World 2012

 All three belong in any serious Walt Disney World collection, as each has complementary strengths. 

• The Unofficial Guide to Walt Disney World 2012:
• Best for the range of issues covered, detail about them (except for rides), dining, and grouping information by topic (e.g., showing all the resort hotel floor plans over a series of pages so you can easily compare them). 
• Its weaknesses include its paucity of photos, a few more errors than I’d like to see, and its intimidating heft
• The Complete Walt Disney World 2012:
• Strengths include stunning photos, unmatched detail on the rides, and recommended websites. 🙂
• Relative weaknesses include limited material on topics other than rides.  The four Disney World theme parks account for almost 50% of the pages in The Complete Walt Disney World 2012, compared to around 17% in The Unofficial Guide and 22% in PassPorter.
• PassPorter’s Walt Disney World 2012:
• Strengths are balance, grouping of information, maps, its unique focus on organizing tools, and tone. PassPorter also has a very strong online presence, with much additional material available at PassPorter.com for free, other focused topics covered in reasonably priced e-books, and a vibrant online community. (I do have a favorite thread on the PassPorter boards.) Its heft and font size are not intimidating.
• Weaknesses of PassPorter largely follow from its strengths of balance and lack of heft: lack of depth on items (other than the parks) as compared to The Unofficial Guide, and lack of detail on the theme parks as compared to The Complete Walt Disney World. There’s also a few inexplicable errors.

The rest of this material will focus on PassPorter’s Walt Disney World 2012.

THE 2012 EDITION OF PASSPORTER’S WALT DISNEY WORLD

The 2012 edition of Jennifer, Dave and Alison C. Marx’s annual series published in January 2012.

Its 350 pages include extensive but not overly detailed treatment of the key topics of a Walt Disney World vacation.

I particularly like the balance of material. 

Like The Complete Walt Disney World, two-thirds of its material is on the key topics of the parks, hotels, and dining. 

While it is thin on the parks compared to Julie’s work, it has more detail than The Complete Walt Disney World on dining and hotels.  It does not match the scope of The Unofficial Guide on these last two topics, but because of that is less intimidating.

See the image for an example of its material on rides. The ride  detail is thinner than that of the Complete Walt Disney World, and comparable to The Unofficial Guide.

From the image you can note a couple of other key points:

• The use of color coding to provide a sense of to whom rides might be attractive
• Vertical and horizontal tabs that help you track where you are–both in the book and at Disney World in general
• Spiral binding, which helps with keeping the work flat and flexible, and allows the inclusion of “PassPockets” (more on these later)

The spiral binding creates a blank space across pairs of pages.  The only topics for which this would matter are maps, but the wonderful maps of the PassPorter are bound in to the spirals as double-sized fold outs.

The material on resorts is particularly useful for its length. 

Resort entries, typically four pages long, include maps, travel time, floor plans, photos, extensive commentary, and ratings.

See the image for a Saratoga Springs example.

I’m personally not keen on combining into one four-page entry the Yacht and Beach Club, Port Orleans French Quarter and Riverside, the DVC villas with their parent resorts, and the Treehouse Villas and Saratoga Springs, as too much distinct information gets lost.

But in this choice the Marxes are largely consistent with everybody else, so I guess I’m just a voice in the wilderness on this one.

PASSPORTER’S CHECKLISTS, WORKSHEETS, AND PASSPOCKETS

This review continues here.

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Update July 9: for rumors of a Fall 2012 free dining deal, see this.

FREE DISNEY WORLD DINING

Walt Disney World has opened its free dining promotion for late August to late September 2012 to the general public.

Eligible arrival dates are August 25th to September 29th 2012.

The deal must be booked by May 18, 2012.

DETAILS ON WALT DISNEY WORLD FREE DINING

As in the past few years, those booking Value Resorts will get the “quick service” plan for free, and those booking Moderate Resorts, Deluxe Resorts, or Disney Vacation Club Resorts will get the regular dining plan for free.

As is also common, grand villas, suites and The Campsites at Disney’s Fort Wilderness Resort are excluded. (The Cabins at Fort Wilderness Resort are eligible.)  Disney’s new Art of Animation Resort is also excluded.  Update: crack commenter Joanne notes that Art of Animation is in the deal.

For some reason, All-Star Music Family Suites are also not eligible.

For Disney’s page in this deal, click here.

For other current Walt Disney World special offers, deals and discounts, see this.

Update July 9: for rumors of a Fall 2012 free dining deal, see this.

This is the second page of this material on deluxe resorts; for the first page, click here.

ROOM QUALITY, FLOOR PLANS AND PRICING AT DISNEY WORLD’S DELUXE RESORTS

All standard Disney World deluxe rooms come with the basics–a couple of queen beds, a TV and a dresser or two, a mini-fridge, a table with a two chairs or a two-part desk and chair, and a closet with a safe.

(For more on what you get, see this.)

What varies is how these are laid out, what more you get, and decor.

The smallest deluxe rooms–at the Wilderness Lodge and the Animal Kingdom Lodge–come with little more than the basics.

See the floor plan.  These rooms sleep four, and while not as small as a room that comfortably fits two queens can be, they are not much larger.

Contrast the floor plan for the Grand Floridian.

These are the largest standard rooms at a Disney-owned resort at Disney World

Additional width and length creates room for an easy chair, sofa (that sleeps another person), and desk.

Hotel designers prefer adding length to adding width, since added width increases the square footage of interior hallways that needs to be heated, cooled, furnished, cleaned, and walked down, but provides little help for the biggest design challenge–fitting in the split bath.

But without more width, there won’t be enough circulation space to fit the couch.

From a design perspective, the Beach Club and Yacht Club are exemplary for fitting everything in without either excess square footage or any sense of the furniture crowding the room or being hard to get around.

As noted above, the split bath can be the hardest design issue.  A split bath separates facilities so that two or three family members can use them at once, but in its most common design creates an eight to ten foot long hallway between the corridor door and the sleeping space–wasted square footage.

Disney’s earliest designs present a curious set of thoughts on how to split a bath.

See the image–the baths in the Polynesian are on the left, and at the Contemporary on the right.

Resorts built since then segregate the sinks into one space, and the bath and toilet into another. This is why the whole bath ensemble can be nine to ten feet long.

So why does all this matter?

More square feet costs you more.  It’s a little more complicated than that, so I’ll come back to costs in a second, but for the moment see the image.

It charts standard room square feet on the vertical axis, and standard nightly room price (all prices on this page are after-tax weekday rates from the Fall price season of 2016) on the horizontal axis.

The charted points show where the deluxe hotels fall, and the red line is added to illustrate the correlation between square footage and nightly rates.

More space means higher capital and operating costs; but it also means more value, value that can be charged for.

But space isn’t the only thing going on here, as there are some correlations within the hotels themselves.

See the image, which orders the Disney World deluxe resorts by nightly price.

• The three most expensive resorts are not only the three with largest rooms; they are also the three monorail resorts, the most convenient hotels to the Magic Kingdom
• The three middle-priced deluxes are not only in the middle of the square footage pack, but are also the three Epcot resorts, the hotels most convenient to Epcot
• The least expensive deluxes not only have the smallest rooms but are also the least convenient of the deluxes.

So the deluxe prices charge for value: for convenience as well as size.

DINING AT DISNEY WORLD’S DELUXE RESORTS

This material continues here. I promise no more talk about square feet…

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This is the third page of this review of Disney’s Yacht Club Resort. For the first page, click here.

THE THEMING OF DISNEY’S YACHT CLUB RESORT

Disney’s Yacht Club Resort opened in November 1990, and in 2009 completed a major renovation.

According to Disney World’s website, the Yacht Club

“…[features] lush landscaping and the formal grace of a grand New England yacht club.

Designed by architect Robert A.M. Stern—known for his East Coast beach houses—this splendid 5-story Resort transports Guests to the summertime Shingle Style hotels of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. (Sister resort Disney’s Beach Club Resort is a more relaxed, pastel-toned edifice next door; the 2 share many amenities.)

Public areas, guest rooms and suites are adorned in dark wood and wicker furniture, portholes and simulated captain’s wheels. Cast Members are decked out in ship’s crew regalia, including navy blazers and captain’s hats.”

The architect (and former Disney board member) Stern on his own website also talks about the Yacht Club in its context with the Beach Club:

“While both hotels draw their inspiration from America’s architectural past, each has a unique identity.

The Yacht Club is reminiscent of the rambling, shingle-covered seaside resorts that were built toward the end of the last century in New England towns such as Newport, Marblehead, and Bar Harbor.

The Beach Club is lighter, more airy in expression. It is modeled on the many Stick Style cottages and resorts that could be found in towns like Cape May, New Jersey.”

(For more on Stern’s role in Walt Disney World, see this.)

Well, I have a couple of issues with this.

First–and yes, do laugh at me for arguing with Stern, the master, about his signature Shingle Style–vernacular Shingle Style has a few more curves than the Yacht Club. Rounded turrets and eyebrow dormers are common elements missing in the Yacht Club.

But more to the point–these two resorts just aren’t that different. [Read more →]

The Mouse For Less is reporting here that Disney will be releasing free dining for 8/25 through 9/29/2012 on Monday March 5.